Choosing a robust quality of work life.

Business periodicals, trade journals, academic publications and even the popular press seem to offer ever-increasing prescriptions about management. Nearly all seem to agree on one point. As never before, organizations are being buffeted by changes that threaten their very survival. Issues such as Total Quality Management (TQM), global competition, and managing a diverse work force take their place in the queue along with traditional management concerns about cash flow, technology, and market share. During the 1980's, even the term "corporate chaos" worked its way into our collective vocabulary. With the precipitous free fall of corporate giants such as IBM, it is not difficult to understand why.

On one hand, many articles offer advice that reveals the apprehension about further rounds of corporate downsizings and how organizations should cope with sweeping change. On the other hand, this stream of management articles frequently boils down to management by platitude, sure to dull any appetite. Not surprisingly, quick fixes and bromides rarely get implemented. As with many management issues today, the problem is at the top of the organization, not the bottom.

Many senior managers quietly discount new management ideas because they do not believe there is any connection to the quarter's bottom line. For example, despite new techniques such as empowerment, self-managing work teams, or TQM, many senior managers act as if these concepts are vacuous buzzwords. Perhaps some executives do not embrace the fundamental shifts in power that these concepts imply. No doubt they prefer the accouterments of power and insular classicism that breed so rapidly in the rarefied air of executive suites. Other managers may prefer to run organizations characterized by the traditional top-down approach, in spite of the compelling evidence that control-dominated companies subvert the long term interests of the organization and the people in it.

A more serious difficulty occurs when managers pay lip service to new management concepts, but go about "business as usual." The problem is so severe that an article in Fortune stated flatly, "Ninety-five percent of American managers today say the right thing ... five percent actually do it" (Huey, 1994). To echo a phrase, they don't "walk the talk."

This creates two critical problems for those who are not CEO's. First, an enormous credibility gap exists. For example, during a corporate restructuring, executives try to project an aura of solidarity. Often, they ceremoniously intone, "We're all in this together." Yet, people quickly learn that senior executives take care of their own, rarely eliminating the excessive staffing and bloat in the upper levels of the organization. More fundamentally, the wide gap between what upper management says and what it does can imperil morale. Management acts as if it is oblivious to the rest of the organization. This self-fulfilling prophecy plays out as a numbing sense of being adrift in the sea of change. Add to this lack of direction unprecedented white-collar reductions in staff, and people become overwhelmed with concerns about personal and professional survival. This, of course, ravages morale in the organization (Emshoff, 1994). Using the lurid phrase, the "downsizing slaughterhouse," The Wall Street Journal (1994) reported that several organizations are characterized by apprehension, fear, and even clinical depression. Dr. Donald E. Rosen, Director of Professionals in Crisis at the Menninger Clinic, states flatly that managers have a deep questioning of the value of the tasks they perform. Stated more succinctly, they hate to go to work (Smith, 1994).

During these difficult times, and particularly in view of continuing corporate consolidations, people choose a range of organizational survival skills. They often manipulate situations and at times, people invoke the names of high-level people to induce support for projects; become calculating in the way they manage relationships; pay an inordinate amount of attention to what senior people want; and live with the belief that they must be cautious to get ahead.

These are the principal ingredients in the recipe of what is usually referred to as "playing the game." Regrettably, most books and popular folklore are quite grim about how to "win." They instruct us how to intimidate people, how to dress for success, how to use power, and how to climb the corporate ladder. It's simply accepted as a given that this is what the road most traveled looks like. Recite the mantra, try to sustain the next round of cutbacks, and you too can climb to the top of the corporate Matterhorn.

But it's not that simple. Even if the organization is not facing retrenchment, this kind of maneuvering causes widespread disillusionment. Although it sometimes works, corporate game playing is not a very satisfying process. Why get better at a bad game? Running the maze in the rat race after all, still makes you a rat. The alternative is to play a different game. It takes risks, conviction, and tests character, but it has many benefits.

At the top of the list is the importance of recognizing that each of us can choose how to respond to any given situation. Stephen Covey underscores this point in his best seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People--each of us should be responsible (Covey, 1989). Taken in its literal form, we have the ability to choose how we respond. Ultimately, it is not so much what happens to us during periods of organizational turbulence, but how we choose to respond.

Author Peter Block once observed that the core of this approach emphasizes several fundamental choices that confront each of us. They are

* choosing between maintenance and greatness.

* choosing between caution and courage.

* choosing between debasement or self-enhancement.

* choosing between dependence and autonomy.

These choices define the tightrope we walk, the course of our professional lives, and a considerable part of our personal lives as well. To a large extent, they circumscribe whether we feast on the bounty of life's banquet, or are allowed to savor just a crumb here and there.

This article expands on these ideas by focusing on individual choice and how it can profoundly influence a robust quality of work life and the fate of the organization itself. Rather than focus on more broad-brush advice aimed at guiding senior management, here we take a different tack. No matter how inept management, or no matter how mixed or sometimes hypocritical the organizational signals might be, each of us has choices. No matter where a person is in his or her professional life, we begin with a simple but powerful premise. Listen to the whisper (or perhaps in a few cases, the shouts) of the little voice from within. Instead of emphasizing empowerment of others, this approach is more up close and personal. Take charge of the quality of your own work life. Empower yourself.

Maintenance vs. Greatness

When we choose maintenance, we are trying to hold on to what we have created or inherited. Our wish is not to lose ground. Traditionally managed, top-down organizations constantly impel us toward a maintenance mentality. To maintain what we have is to be preoccupied with safety. The popular desire of moving up in the organization is accompanied by the numbing fear of falling or being "booted out" in a corporate downsizing. The prevailing norm in many organizations often becomes--the way to move ahead is not to make mistakes. Since the common belief is that mistakes are punished much more vigorously than achievements are rewarded, apple-polishing is institutionalized into a new, high art form. Ironically, the higher that one goes in the organization, the more dominant this feeling becomes. One would think that the higher one rises, confidence and risk-taking increase. On the contrary, the higher people go, and the greater the compulsion to hang on to what they have, the greater the fear of falling. The incessant backbiting and negative aspects of politics in high places bears this out. We are surrounded by corporate game-players and often choose to be led by others--however self-serving or incompetent.

Ask many of these people how they're doing, and you'll hear "not bad." This is the top of the scale; this is as good as it gets. The possibility that things could be good or even great isn't even in the cards.

The option we have is to seek some form of greatness. This concept is difficult for most of us to come to terms with. It implies arrogance, and an immortality that in-bred modesty tells us is inappropriate in a work context. For example, when I ask managers what form of greatness they aspire to for themselves and their departments, the most common response is, "Give me a break. I'm just trying to keep my head above water." Many organizations often condition their members to accept this water-treading mentality, instead of focusing on getting some place. We tend to think that greatness is reserved for people such as Mother Theresa. Instead, the real issue is to recognize that the potential for greatness is within each individual, regardless of how humble the role, job title, or place in the organizational hierarchy.

The immense popularity of the 1980's best seller, In Search of Excellence (Peters, 1984), is an expression of the desire to find an alternative to bureaucratic organizational life. The choice for greatness is the commitment to behave differently ... to achieve in a unique way ... not to play the game. It is also a risky choice because by just choosing greatness we run the risk of not achieving it. Admittedly, choosing a unique path in a traditional organization can be dangerous. In many companies following a path of high risk means simply behaving like a human being. It's choosing this riskier path that is the essence of what Covey calls responsibility (1989).

Print Get the Mag Weekly Updates